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Human character is smaller now, people don't have durable passions they've replaced passions with excitement.

Saul Bellow

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Saul Bellow
Age: 89 †
Born: 1915
Born: June 10
Died: 2005
Died: April 5
Author
Essayist
Novelist
University Teacher
Writer
Solomon Bellows
Humans
Durable
People
Smaller
Replaced
Passions
Excitement
Passion
Character
Human

More quotes by Saul Bellow

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Fun comes hard - like, alas, its prarens, pleasure and happiness, whom we have to pursue.
Saul Bellow
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You have, like the external world, your own phenomena inside.
Saul Bellow
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Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.
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In politics continental Europe was infantile - horrifying. What America lacked, for all its political stability, was the capacity to enjoy intellectual pleasures as though they were sensual pleasures. This is what Europe offered, or was said to offer.
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You're all alone when you're a writer. Sometimes you just feel you need a humanity bath. Even a ride on the subway will do that. But it's much more interesting to talk about books. After all, that's what life used to be for writers: they talk books, politics, history, America. Nothing has replaced that.
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A man is only as good as what he loves.
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With one long breath, caught and held in his chest, he fought his sadness over his solitary life. Don't cry, you idiot! Live or die, but don't poison everything.
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I labor, I spend, I strive, I design, I love, I cling, I uphold, I give way, I envy, I long, I scorn, I die, I hide, I want. Faster, much faster than any man could make the tally.
Saul Bellow
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It seems hard for the American people to believe that anything could be more exciting than the times themselves. What we read daily and view on the TV has thrust imagined forms into the shadow. We are staggeringly rich in facts, in things, and perhaps, like the nouveau riche of other ages, we want our wealth faithfully reproduced by the artist.
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Losing a parent is something like driving through a plate-glass window. You didn't know it was there until it shattered, and then for years to come you're picking up the pieces -- down to the last glassy splinter.
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(Socrates) said there were only two possibilities. Either the soul is immortal or, after death, things would be again as blank as they were before we were born.
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A writer is a reader moved to emulation.
Saul Bellow
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Retirement is an illusion. Not a reward but a mantrap. The bankrupt underside of success. A shortcut to death. Golf courses are too much like cemeteries.
Saul Bellow
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A good novel is worth more then the best scientific study.
Saul Bellow
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If I had a child of school age, I would send him to one of the Waldorf Schools.
Saul Bellow
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How could I be anything but a dissenter? Who wants the opinion of a group?
Saul Bellow
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We are funny creatures. We don't see the stars as they are, so why do we love them? They are not small gold objects, but endless fire.
Saul Bellow
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When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.
Saul Bellow
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I blame myself for not often enough seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. Somewhere in his journals, Dostoyevky remarks that a writer can begin anywhere, at the most commonplace thing, scratch around in it long enough, pry and dig away long enough, and lo!, soon he will hit upon the marvelous.
Saul Bellow
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Ninety per cent of life is a nightmare, do you think I am going to get it rounded up to hundred per cent?
Saul Bellow